"The advantage of using graphene membranes for piezoresistve sensors is their extreme thinness," Frank Niklaus, a professor at KTH, told EE Times. "The sensitivity of piezoresistive membrane sensors scale with reduced membrane thickness."

Piezoresistive pressure sensors typically integrate piezoresistive silicon resistors into sensor membranes, so that resistivity reads out strain. The MEMS version suspends the membrane over a cavity by etching out the silicon dioxide on the layer below it. KTH's version suspends an extremely thin layer of graphene over a cavity etched into a silicon dioxide film on a silicon substrate. The extreme thinness of graphene membrane -- sub-nanometer for monolayers -- correspondingly increases the sensitivity of the electromechanical effect that makes the sensor work.

The researchers confirmed that graphene was indeed the enabler of their new sensor topology by connecting the substrate as a gate electrode, resulting in the characteristic operation of a graphene field effect transistor (GFET). Connected as a strain gauge, its measured piezoelectric gauge factor was just under three. Even so, the researchers say a typical strain gauge using their topology would result in a sensor just a few microns in length, compared to hundreds of microns for silicon piezoresistive sensors today. And pressure sensors are just the beginning.

"In principle, any MEMS sensor that uses the piezoresistive effect in a membrane configuration can benefit from the concept," Niklaus says.

Researchers at the University of Udine in Italy and the University of Siegen in Germany also contributed to the work. Funding was provided by the European Research Council, the German Research Foundation, and the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities, and Research.

I think the newer MEMS will not a problem as far as manufacturing is concern, as they have already a prototype (As seen from the picture in the article). But application and acceptance will be dependent on the manufacturers' efforts.

It is just a start, I think all the sensors associated with either of force/pressure/vibration will be having a complete makeover and miniaturization of their size and shape. But the durability will be the property of testing still.

Frank: I'm with you. The advance in research and theory is always inspiring, but I'd be interested to know where this is in the pipleline that flows from academia to the production flaw. We know that some technologies never make it all the way through, but it's nice to keep an eye on their progress.

Does anyone know, or can even speculate, on how long it typically takes for such advances to result in a practical prototype of an actual product? Surely, there's some sort of rule of thumb on that...?